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44. The Astronaut and the Star by Jen Comfort. 4. She's a super competitive astronaut, he's a goofy movie star with undiagnosed ADHD. They fight sort-of crime, mostly bad parents and stupid YouTubers. Sweet and charming.
45. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. 5. Somewhere between self-help and philosophy, a musing on what we should actually think about doing for a meaningful life from someone who fully admits he doesn't have neat answers.
46. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. 3.5. I adored this as a kid, and have always had a soft spot for castaway narratives. As an adult, this is a little on the smug side. Usually, the castaway has a good reason they have to do the survivalist thing; in this, the kid runs away and the parents are genially cool with it. Also, it's unbelievable in how easily everything works out for him. But the falcon's cool.
47. Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold. 5. The first of the Penric novels (it took me a little while to find my copy). Painfully innocent nobleman accidentally gets possessed by an incredibly powerful demon, and instead of freaking out or going on a rampage, decides to make friends with her.
48. Naamah's Curse by Jacqueline Carey. 4. There's a lot of rehashing the previous book, but given that I had more than a decade between the first and second books, that's probably a good thing. As is typical of the series at this point, we have a major travelogue with a meandering plot (punctuated by plenty of sexytimes). All of which is genuinely enthralling world-building and pretty great sexytimes.
49. The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook. 3.5. Steampunk swashbuckler with a very convoluted backstory involving the Golden Horde taking over Europe via nanobots and zombies but is mostly about the sexy sexy air pirate-turned Duke. I feel like there were some cool themes that kept getting brought up and then not fully exploited.
50. The Quiet Gentleman by Georgette Heyer. 3.5. I feel like Heyer usually gets filed under Regency Romance, but this one is really a Regency mystery in which a minor character eventually ends up with the hero. The romance part is pretty underdeveloped, but the mystery is fun. The snark is top notch.
51. Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer. 2. In which Heyer shows her age unfavorably. Minor bits of ugly racism. But mostly a domineering hero and a completely idiotic damsel in a very old-school romance arc. Tries to do a bunch of misdirection with a mystery, but it's pretty obvious where it's going, and almost everyone needs to be slapped upside the head with a rolled up newspaper. Did Not Age Well.
52. Planesrunner by Ian McDonald. 3. The first couple chapters promise reality hopping, but 9/10 of the book is bogged down on one (admittedly cool) electropunk world. There's some cool stuff here, but the plot of the book are really disconnected from the plot of the trilogy in a way that kind of turned me off.
51. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. 5. A small not-quite-literary, not-quite-romance contemporary fiction about rock and roll and comic books and being a teenager and abusive parents and falling in love. The author's voice is just so compelling, though, I felt like I was half in the characters' heads hours after I finished reading it.
45. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. 5. Somewhere between self-help and philosophy, a musing on what we should actually think about doing for a meaningful life from someone who fully admits he doesn't have neat answers.
46. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. 3.5. I adored this as a kid, and have always had a soft spot for castaway narratives. As an adult, this is a little on the smug side. Usually, the castaway has a good reason they have to do the survivalist thing; in this, the kid runs away and the parents are genially cool with it. Also, it's unbelievable in how easily everything works out for him. But the falcon's cool.
47. Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold. 5. The first of the Penric novels (it took me a little while to find my copy). Painfully innocent nobleman accidentally gets possessed by an incredibly powerful demon, and instead of freaking out or going on a rampage, decides to make friends with her.
48. Naamah's Curse by Jacqueline Carey. 4. There's a lot of rehashing the previous book, but given that I had more than a decade between the first and second books, that's probably a good thing. As is typical of the series at this point, we have a major travelogue with a meandering plot (punctuated by plenty of sexytimes). All of which is genuinely enthralling world-building and pretty great sexytimes.
49. The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook. 3.5. Steampunk swashbuckler with a very convoluted backstory involving the Golden Horde taking over Europe via nanobots and zombies but is mostly about the sexy sexy air pirate-turned Duke. I feel like there were some cool themes that kept getting brought up and then not fully exploited.
50. The Quiet Gentleman by Georgette Heyer. 3.5. I feel like Heyer usually gets filed under Regency Romance, but this one is really a Regency mystery in which a minor character eventually ends up with the hero. The romance part is pretty underdeveloped, but the mystery is fun. The snark is top notch.
51. Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer. 2. In which Heyer shows her age unfavorably. Minor bits of ugly racism. But mostly a domineering hero and a completely idiotic damsel in a very old-school romance arc. Tries to do a bunch of misdirection with a mystery, but it's pretty obvious where it's going, and almost everyone needs to be slapped upside the head with a rolled up newspaper. Did Not Age Well.
52. Planesrunner by Ian McDonald. 3. The first couple chapters promise reality hopping, but 9/10 of the book is bogged down on one (admittedly cool) electropunk world. There's some cool stuff here, but the plot of the book are really disconnected from the plot of the trilogy in a way that kind of turned me off.
51. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. 5. A small not-quite-literary, not-quite-romance contemporary fiction about rock and roll and comic books and being a teenager and abusive parents and falling in love. The author's voice is just so compelling, though, I felt like I was half in the characters' heads hours after I finished reading it.
